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Monthly Archives: April 2010

John 5:1-15

This morning there was a little bit of confusion by the choir because they were expecting the Doxalogical hymn of Pascha, which ends with ‘Christ is Risen.’ This is a very reasonable expectation because we are still celebrating Pascha and will be until Ascension. This is the reason why we see all the bay leaves and all the flowers. They are out because we are still celebrating. The tomb has been opened.

We throw the flowers and the bay leaves all over the place because St. John tells us that Christ was buried in a garden tomb (John 19:41). We imagine the power of God and the energies present when Christ is risen from the dead bursting forth with power, glory, fragrance and wonder from the tomb. This is why we see the priest throwing the bay leaves and flowers on Holy Saturday crying out Arise O Lord! And we still have the kouvouklion out. It represents the tomb and note that we place in it the icon of the Myrrh-Bearing Women at the Empty Tomb. So, this stays out for 40 days.

Yet, today is the first Gospel Reading we hear on a Sunday after Pascha that isn’t directly related to the Resurrection. On Thomas Sunday, right after Pascha, we see Thomas encounter the Risen Christ and place his hands in the mark of the nails and in His side. Last week we read about the Myrrh-Bearing Women discovering the empty tomb. In contrast, today we read about the Paralytic next to the Sheep Pool. This is before Christ went to Golgotha and was crucified — before we know Him as the Risen Christ.

The reason for this is that in the life of the Church we are in periods of expectation and periods of celebration. Great Lent is an example of one long act of anticipation. We anticipate Pascha and saying to the world, “Christ is Risen!” Then, after Pascha, for 40 days we continue to say it: “Christ is risen from the dead, by death he has trampled death and to those in the tomb He has granted life!” We sing this over and over and over again. At the same time, however, we begin to anticipate Pentecost.

In today’s Gospel reading, we see hints that the Church is beginning to turn its attention towards Pentecost. The Sheep Pool, Bethesda, had a liturgical significance to the life of the Jews. The Gospel according to John speaks of the festival of tents, which the Church equates with Pentecost. There was a liturgical act that the Jews used to do during this festival. The priests would take a big, golden pitcher to the Sheep Pool to take water from the pool to use as a liquid sacrifice at the altar. Thus, the Church is using the story of the Paralytic, which happens next to the Sheep Pool, to pique our interest and get us to start anticipating Pentecost.

On top of this we hear about the descent of the Angel of the Lord upon the waters, which reminds us of both the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles at Pentecost and the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the waters at our own baptism. We are reminded of the glorious miracles through the presence of the Holy Spirit that made it possible for the Holy Apostles to go forth and accomplish, against all odds, the great commission to baptize all the nations in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Given this context, I’d like to read you today’s Kontakion, read during Orthros this morning:

I have sinned in every way, I have improperly acted; therefore with paralysis my soul is woefully stricken. Raise it up, O Lord, through Your own divine attention, even as of old You raised up the paralytic, so that saved I may cry, Glory to Your dominion, O my compassionate Christ.

The Church is making the story of the Paralytic into a metaphor. It reminds us of the reality of the fallen world. Though each and every one of us may be a faithful Orthodox Christian, though we make time in our lives to come to church on a Sunday morning, though we make time for Him in our daily lives, each of us — including and especially myself — sins. This reality of sin is like a paralysis and if left untended, it will paralyze our whole life. The cure for this paralysis, according to this morning’s Gospel reading, is coming into the presence of Jesus Christ. By a word, He heals the paralytic, “Pick up your pallet and walk” (John 5:8).

Our cure is the same. Come into the presence of our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ and the paralysis of our sin is healed. It is washed away. The most obvious way that we come into the presence of Christ is what we do every Sunday. Christ is on the Table. His Body and Blood are right there. We are given the great blessing to partake of them. He is with us.

The challenge for all of us is to take this moment, this liturgy — this work of the people — and apply it out in the world. We must make choices on a daily basis to be in the presence of our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ. This is made possible out in the world by the descent of the Holy Spirit.

We are the Temples of God. The Holy Spirit is with us always. As we say at the beginning of many of our services:

O heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of truth, who are everywhere and fill all things, the treasury of blessings and giver of life, come and dwell within us and cleanse us from every blemish and save our souls, O Good One.

We participate in the Holy Spirit with the life of the Church. We do this when we choose prayer over turning on the TV or the computer to catch up on the morning news — something I struggle with. We do this when we choose to be at church during the week — whether to do work around the church (such as maintenance) or to attend Bible Study, Chant Class or a service — instead of playing golf, catching up on work, watching a movie, etc. These are choices we are given on a daily basis. So we need to make the choice to make the time to be with our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ. Make the choice to pray. Make the choice to spend time with Scripture — to learn about our Savior.

During Orthros this morning, we read about Cleopas and Luke on the Road to Emmaus. Our Risen Lord opens up the Scripture for them, about how all of them speak about Him. He wasn’t taking about the Four Gospel accounts or the Epistles (they didn’t exist yet!), He was speaking about the Old Testament. As Christ tells us, the OT is replete with information about who Jesus Christ is. We need to make the choice to look for Him there. Make the choice to be with Him, to get to know Him and understand who He is.

When we make the choice to be with someone who needs our help, who needs our presence — “For two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there in the midst of them” (Matt 18:20). Thus we make the choice to visit people in the hospital and those in need in order to bring Christ with us where ever we go. We make the choice to be with Christ through other people — the people we see on a daily basis.

Make the choice to live that life where we get out of the way — we must decrease so that Christ can increase within us, as St. John the Baptist says (see John 3:30). When we make these choices to live and walk with with Christ all the time, when we allow the Holy Spirit to flow through us unabated by our own fallenness we will see miracles happen.

This past week, I was talking to a friend of mine, who happens to be a pastor. He was struggling with the idea of miracles. He says to me, I read the Scripture and about all these miracles — where have they all gone? I told him about what they tell you on Mt. Athos. You will see miracles on Mt. Athos every day, but don’t make a bid deal out of it, because it’s normal. When you are with God, when you walk with Christ every where you go the miraculous is normal. The miraculous is the way the world should be. A world without miracles is abnormal — it is not what God intended for His creation. When we make the choice to walk with God, our hearts are softened, our eyes are opened, our ears will open and we will see and hear miracles every where we go.

So, let us cry out to our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ, heal me of the paralysis of my own sin. Be with me. Walk with me. Allow me to see and hear Your work in Your world through me.

Christ is risen from the dead, by death He has trampled death and to those in the tombs, He has granted life.

The name ‘George’ is an old Greek word meaning ‘farmer.’ It is derived from the Greek word ‘γη’ meaning ‘earth’ or ‘land.’ In English we are familiar with it as ‘geo’ as in geography and geology. Last night, I was struck by the Doxastikon for St. George, which takes advantage of this meaning:

You have lived worthily of your name, O soldier George; for taking the Cross of Christ upon your shoulders, you have cultivated the earth that had had become barren because of diabolic deception; and uprooting the thorny religion of the idols, you have planted the vine of the Orthodox Faith. Wherefore you gush forth healings for the faithful throughout the world, and have proved to be the Trinity’s righteous husbandman. Intercede, we pray, for the peace of the world and the salvation of our souls.

I just love this metaphor. The image of tilling the barren soil of our collective culture with the Cross and pulling out the weeds of those philosophies and mind-sets that take us away from God is compelling. It challenges all of us to take up our Cross, to live the Christian life full of love and to shine forth the light of Christ in a dark world. We must not allow atheism, secularism or synchretism to stand unchallenged.

When we till the soil of our lives with the Cross, we plant seeds. The Gospel of Christ — Christ is risen from the dead, by death He has tramped death and to those in the tombs He has granted life — has a way of growing within the hearts of everyone who hears it. When we challenge the conventional wisdom that those who believe must be ignorant, or that religion is inferior in every way to science or that one cannot be rational and religious, we soften the soil of the heart and make it easier for the seed to find root.

So, on this, the Feast of St. George the Great Martyr, let us all become farmers for Christ. Amen.

Today is Earth Day. I know this because, as a father of three children, various television channels have been screaming “Earth Day is Thursday!” at my family for a week now. As I write this, these same channels are now spewing forth propaganda into living rooms across the U.S., as opposed to the stuff that my generation grew up with (and wouldn’t have a prayer of getting produced in today’s zealously PC environment):

Now, let me be very clear, I have nothing against living in harmony with our environment. As a matter of fact, the Bible tells us that we should be living up to our roles as the royal priesthood (1 Pet 2:9) and take care of God’s creation (Gen 1:26). However, I do have a problem when we actively take God out of the equation. Though we are less than a month after Pascha (Easter) — and the Orthodox are still in the midst of celebrating the Resurrection — I have heard more about Earth Day in the last 24 hours than I have about the Risen Lord in the past month. This is idolatry.

In 2 Chronicles (33:7-8) we see King Manasseh become an idolater:

He put a sculpted image, an idol which he had had made, inside the Temple of which God had said to David and his son Solomon, ‘In this Temple and in Jerusalem, the city which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I shall put my name for ever.

In context of Christ, the Temple is now Humanity, because God now resides in us — both the Holy Spirit when we are chrismated, and in the person of Christ who is perfect God and perfect man. Thus, when we bring into our lives anything that keeps us from God or that we make more important than God, we have made it into an idol. St. Paul confirms this logic in Colossians (3:4-5):

When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

Environmentalist leaders, such as Al Gore and James Cameron have taken to calling those who question man-made global warming “deniers.” This kind of language recalls the lapsed — those Christians who, in the face of martyrdom at the hand of Roman authorities, denied Christ by sacrificing to the image of the Roman Emperor. Thus, we have replaced Christ with environmentalism, global warming and the earth itself.

Charging forward into a “green” lifestyle sans God, and without a careful examination of all the consequences, can only lead to disaster. Take the Toyota Prius, for example. It is one of the biggest users of rare earth metals of any object in the world. If every vehicle in the world became a hybrid or electric, we would be trading one limited resource (petroleum) for another more scarce resource. What are the long term environmental consequences? Those metals have to be extracted from the earth, just as petroleum does. What impact does this type of mining have? We still need to produce efficient electricity to run these vehicles — where does it come from? Are we asking these kinds of questions, or are we bowing down to the idol of environmentalism?

As Christians, we should be taking care of the garden — co-creating with God and sanctifying His creation. We also need to be prophets, warning the world that turning our back on God, as Adam and Eve did, has dire consequences.

At the recommendation of a friend, the first book I picked up to read after Pascha was Son of Hamas by Mosab Hassan Yousef. He is the son of one of the founders of Hamas, was a faithful Muslim and a participant in the first Intifada. At the age of 18 he was arrested, tortured and sent to prison. This experience plays a very large role in two monumental decisions he made for his life — to become a spy and informant for the Israelis and to convert to Christianity. Son of Hamas is an autobiographical account of Yousef’s journey towards these two fateful choices.

At the center of this account is the following observation:

By the time my father arrived in Jordan in the mid-1970s to continue his studies, the Muslim Brotherhood there was well established and beloved by the people. Its members were doing everything that was on my father’s heart — encouraging renewed faith among those who had strayed from the Islamic way of life, healing those who were hurt, and trying to save people from corrupting influences in society. He believed these men were religious reformers to Islam, as Martin Luther and William Tyndale were to Christianity. They only wanted to save people and improve their lives, not to kill and destroy. And when my father met some of the early leaders of the Brotherhood, he said, “Yes, this is what I have been looking for.”

What my father saw in those early day was the part of Islam that reflects love and mercy. What he didn’t see, what perhaps has never allowed himself to see, is the other side of Islam.

Islamic life is like a ladder, with prayer and praising Allah as the bottom rung. The higher rungs represent helping the poor and needy, establishing schools, and supporting charities. The highest rung is jihad.

This observation plays itself over and over again throughout the book — seemingly rational, kind, loving and “moderate” Muslims with wives, children and successful careers end up condoning, enabling and participating in the brutal torture and murder of innocents.

As such, it is a fascinating read. This is not an academic’s second-hand understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is a first-hand account from someone who lived it and intimately understands it from three different perspectives: as a Palestinian, as an Israeli operative and, finally, as a Christian. It challenges us to examine the reasons behind both the choices made by all of these reasonable, moderate Muslims to become jihadists and the choice of Yousef to reject this path and instead choose Jesus Christ.

From my own perspective, this book clearly demonstrates that belief systems and their dogmas have practical consequences in the way we live our lives. Though Son of Hamas does not deal with dogmatic issues (other than Yousef’s long struggle to understand Jesus Christ as God), it does illustrate that the radical differences between Christian and Islamic dogma do result in radical differences in behavior.

This becomes plain if we take a simple step back and compare Jesus with Muhammad. Each represents a pinnacle of what it means to be human to their respective followers, who strive to be more like them. So let us do a simple comparison of what the two did:

Jesus sacrificed Himself in order to save all of humanity.

Mohammad advocated acts of violence against those that defied him and participated in these acts of violence himself.

Is it any wonder that Christian martyrs were executed by oppressive governments and Muslim martyrs murder themselves and take as many people with them? Or that when Christianity conquered the Roman Empire they did so with love and that when Islam founded their empire, they did so by the sword?

Son of Hamas is an excellent read, if heart wrenching. In the end, Yousef is absolutely correct that the only way we are to resolve the conflict between Islam and Israel is by engraining upon the hearts of all the uniquely Christian tenet of Christ: love your enemy as yourself.

I need to apologize for neglecting this blog for as long as I have. Various medical issues (both my own and my daughter’s) have made the past months with Lent, Holy Week etc. far more challenging than I expected or wanted. As a result, this blog fell of my radar. God willing, I will be posting far more often in the near future.